UC-NRLF 


2M3    53fi 


BEYOND  THE  DESERT 

I 

ALFRED    NOYES 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


WORKS  OF  ALFRED  NOTES 


COLLECTED  POEMS  —  3  Vols. 

THE  LORD  OF  MISRULE 

A  BELGIAN  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

THE  WINE-PRESS 

TALES  OP  THE  MERMAID  TAVERN 

SHERWOOD 

THE  ENCHANTED  ISLAND 

DRAKE:  AN  ENGLISH  EPIC 

POEMS 

THE  FLOWER  OF  OLD  JAPAN 

THE  GOLDEN  HYNDE 

THE  NEW  MORNING 

THE  ELFIN  ARTIST 

WALKING  SHADOWS  —  Prose 
BEYOND  THE  DESERT  —  Prose 


BEYOND   THE 
DESERT 

A  TALE  OF  DEATH  VALLEY 

BY 

ALFRED  NOYES 


NEW   YORK 

FREDERICK  A.    STOKES   COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  19SO,  by 
THE  RED  BOOK  CORPORATION 

Copyright,  1920,  by 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of  translation 
into  foreign  languages. 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


827295 


BEYOND  THE  DESERT 


CHAPTER  I 

THERE  is  only  one  "Painted  Desert," 
and  it  belongs  to  Arizona;  but  all  the 
desert  region  of  Western  America, 
from  Mexico  to  Death  Valley,  deserves  the 
hint  of  beauty  in  that  name.  It  is  perilous  to 
go  astray  in  that  region.  The  wanderer  who 
loses  his  landmarks  may  never  find  them 
again.  There  is  an  exquisite  delicacy  in  the 
ever  changing  shadows  of  those  lightly  un 
dulating  leagues,  colored  like  the  pelt  of  a 
gigantic  sleeping  leopard,  in  which  the  spots 
are  formed  by  the  grotesque  olive  green  cacti, 
and  the  lighter  parts  of  the  fur  are  soft  drift 
ing  sand.  But  the  picture  dissolves  before  you 
have  grasped  it.  The  distant  mesas,  those 
rocky  table-lands,  faceted  like  jewels,  darken 
and  smoulder  with  every  change  of  the  sky. 

__ 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


The  lilac  facet  turns  to  amethyst,  the  amethyst 
to  violet,  the  violet  to  lilac  again;  and,  with 
every  change  of  color,  the  landmarks  alter. 
Forms  change,  as  if  the  hard  dry  landscape 
were  the  softest  of  cloud-stuff.  It  is  danger 
ous  to  go  astray  in  a  land  where  the  cavern 
of  shadow  quietly  turns  to  a  delicate  blue 
pyramid,  cut  and  polished  like  a  jewel  by  the 
hand  of  Nature  herself,  or  where  the  broken 
gray  rocks  against  a  blue  sky-line  become  an 
enchanted  garden  of  orange  and  vermilion  in 
the  middle  of  a  gray  plain. 

The  horseman,  or  even  the  pedestrian,  on 
the  outskirts  of  that  desert,  may  be  tempted 
to  explore  those  rifts  and  canyons,  apparently 
not  more  than  three  miles  away,  colored  like 
the  mouth  of  Aladdin's  cave.  The  colors  are 
too  warm  to  suggest  the  deadly  embraces  of 
the  Sphinx.  Not  until  the  traveler  has 
watched  the  hills  of  his  desire  receding  before 
him  hour  after  hour,  through  that  dry  clear 
air,  and  tries  to  retrace  his  path,  does  it  dawn 
upon  him  that  a  living  Sphinx,  with  purple- 

""    [2]      "  


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


lidded  eyes  and  Indian  blood  in  her  veins,  may 
be  more  perilous  than  any  shaped  in  Egypt. 
Weeks  afterwards,  a  search  party  may  find 
the  bleached  bones  of  her  victim,  and  the 
prints  in  the  sand  will  indicate  that  he  has 
been  walking  in  a  circle,  perhaps  round  the 
carcass  of  his  horse,  till  he  dropped  exhausted. 
It  was  with  a  vivid  sense  of  this  peril  that, 
as  dawn  broke  over  the  American  desert,  on 
September  1,  19 — ,  a  gaunt  disheveled  man 
who  had  been  resting  at  the  foot  of  a  giant 
cactus,  rose  to  his  feet  and  turned,  staring  at 
the  ring  of  uhe  horizon  all  round  him  as  a 
sailor  looks  for  the  first  glimpse  of  land.  His 
own  black  shadow,  stretching  endlessly  to  the 
west,  through  the  goblin  shadows  of  the  cac 
tus,  was  the  only  sign  of  life  that  he  could  see 
in  all  that  tawny  waste.  Eastward,  the  dawn 
had  dappled  the  ledges  of  the  blue  mesas  with 
a  red  that  seemed  to  smoke  like  spilt  blood  in 
the  beginnings  of  the  heat  haze.  The  color 
was  repeated  in  a  blood-stained  strip  of  cotton 
that  bandaged  the  man's  left  arm,  and  in  an- 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


other  discarded  strip  on  the  ground  at  his  feet. 

In  his  white  drill  trousers  and  cotton  shirt, 
open  across  the  chest  where  he  had  ripped 
away  the  strips  for  the  bandage,  James  Bax 
ter  cut  a  very  strange  figure  against  that  lone 
ly  background.  His  lean  face,  under  its  dark 
mane  of  hair,  was  that  of  an  educated  man, 
but  a  man  born  for  rebellion;  one  of  those 
flaming  creatures  who  shy  at  hard  facts,  as  an 
untamed  mustang  will  shy  at  a  wheelbarrow. 
Like  most  of  his  kind,  he  had  Celtic  blood  in 
him,  and  his  dark  eyes  were  equally  quick  to 
blaze  with  anger,  or  soften  to  beauty  and  ten 
derness.  He  could  talk  of  killing,  the  wiping 
out  of  tyrants,  or  the  devastation  of  cities  in 
one  moment,  and  in  the  next,  a  spirit  as  inno 
cent  as  that  of  a  child  or  any  other  wild  crea 
ture  would  smile  at  you.  In  short,  he  had 
never  found  himself;  and  it  is  hardly  speak 
ing  too  symbolically  to  say  that  this  was  really 
why  he  had  now  lost  himself  in  the  desert. 

How  far  he  had  wandered  during  the  night 
Baxter  did  not  know.  A  little  before  sunset 

[4]    " " 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


on  the  previous  evening,  when  the  train,  in 
which  he  was  being  conveyed  as  a  prisoner, 
had  been  held  up  in  the  desert  by  a  freight- 
wreck  ahead,  his  warders  had  allowed  him  to 
stretch  his  legs  with  the  rest  of  the  passengers. 
They  had  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  sur 
rounding  desert  eliminated  all  hope  of  escape, 
even  for  an  I.  W.  W.  leader.  Baxter  had 
seized  a  favorable  moment,  dived  under  the 
train,  and  sprinted  through  the  cactus.  He 
was  in  far  better  training  than  his  pursuers — 
it  was  only  ten  years  since  he  had  carried  away 
the  long-distance  honors  at  a  California  col 
lege,  and  he  had  always  kept  himself  fit.  He 
had  been  pursued  hotly,  not  only  by  his 
warders  but  by  a  number  of  passengers,  yelp 
ing  in  the  excitement  of  the  chase.  He  even 
thought  that  he  saw,  once,  as  he  looked  back, 
a  figure  on  a  horse.  It  was  possible,  for  he 
remembered  seeing  a  horse  put  into  the  train 
at  a  wayside  station.  He  had  watched  its 
owner — a  lanky  Western  girl — feeding  it 
with  sugar.  But  there  must  have  been  a  delay 

[5] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


before  any  one  thought  of  a  mounted  pursuit. 
It  was  far  away  behind  him,  and  the  quick- 
falling  night  soon  blotted  it  out  altogether. 
A  series  of  broken  rocks  helped  him  to  get 
away  completely,  with  nothing  worse  than  the 
slight  bullet  wound  in  his  forearm  which  he 
had  received  in  the  first  minute  of  his  flight. 

His  one  idea,  all  through  the  night,  had 
been  to  plunge  as  far  as  possible  into  the  shel 
tering  heart  of  the  desert;  to  put  mile  after 
mile  of  its  starlit  mystery  between  himself  and 
his  pursuers;  and,  here  at  dawn,  he  was  lost 
as  hopelessly  as  a  man  who  should  cut  himself 
adrift  from  an  ocean  liner,  half  way  across  the 
Atlantic,  in  an  open  boat. 

He  had  not  been  entirely  without  foresight 
in  preparing  for  his  escape.  Passengers  on 
the  trans-continental  trains  are  often  as 
heavily  loaded  with  gifts  of  provender  as 
those  on  an  Atlantic  liner,  and,  before  he 
dived  under  the  train,  Baxter  had  carefully 
noted  and  seized  a  basket  belonging  to  a  plump 
Episcopal  clergyman.  On  the  other  side  of 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


the  train,  many  of  the  passengers  were  pre 
paring  to  open  bottles  of  drinking  water.  He 
had  grabbed  two  of  these  and  thrust  them  into 
the  basket  as  he  ran. 

He  found  on  examining  the  clergyman's 
property  this  morning,  that  it  included  a  Cam- 
embert  cheese,  six  large  Bartlett  pears,  a  box 
of  crackers,  three  slabs  of  milk  chocolate,  a 
bunch  of  Cornichon  grapes,  and  part  of  a 
Los  Angeles  Sunday  newspaper. 

He  had  lost  his  bearings  completely  during 
the  night.  It  was  not  till  daybreak  that  he 
knew  east  from  west  again.  The  fever  of  his 
flight  would  have  prevented  him  from  "steering 
by  the  stars,"  even  if  he  had  known  enough 
about  it — and  he  did  not.  It  is  a  far  more  diffi 
cult  feat  in  practice  than  in  theory.  There  was 
only  one  course  to  take  now,  and  that  was  to 
try  to  strike  the  railroad  again.  If  he  could 
find  it,  he  might  follow  it  after  dark,  westward. 
Here  and  there,  he  knew,  there  were  little  way 
side  settlements  of  Mexican  workmen,  amongst 
whom  he  might  count  on  finding  sympathizers 

__ 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


with  his  particular  branch  of  crime.  He 
might  even  be  able  to  steal  a  ride  on  a  freight- 
train  and  get  into  California.  Certainly,  this 
was  his  chief  hope. 


[8] 


CHAPTER  II 


It  was  not  until  he  was  actually  on  his  feet, 
with  the  intention  of  carrying  out  this  plan, 
that  he  was  faced  by  another  difficulty,  of  a 
maddening  simplicity.  He  had  got  the  points 
of  the  compass  now,  and  he  knew  that  the  rail 
way  ran  roughly  from  east  to  west.  But  he 
did  not  know  whether  the  line  lay  to  the  north 
or  south  of  him.  He  tried  to  remember  on 
which  side  of  the  train  he  had  been  taken  out 
by  his  warders;  and  whether  the  engine  had 
been  to  his  left  or  to  his  right  as  he  escaped. 
His  dive  under  the  train  confused  his  mem 
ory,  in  just  those  essential  particulars,  and 
the  more  he  puzzled  over  them  the  more  un 
certain  he  became.  He  tried  to  remember 
whether  the  sun  had  been  to  his  left  or  to  his 
right;  but  most  of  the  time,  before  sunset,  he 
had  been  thinking  of  too  many  other  things, 
provender,  bullets,  and  the  pursuit.  He  had 

[9] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


run  due  east  as  soon  as  he  sighted  the  broken 
rocks  through  which  he  had  eventually  made 
his  escape.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
try  to  retrace  his  footsteps, — a  difficult  mat 
ter,  since  he  had  walked  at  random  for  hours, 
now  on  sand  and  now  on  ledges  of  rock;  but 
he  might  be  able  to  discover  the  general  direc 
tion.  The  thought  of  failure  was  too  grim  to 
admit. 

The  direction  of  the  footprints  in  the  sand 
was  plain  enough,  for  a  time,  as  he  retraced 
them  due  north.  Then  he  found  that  he  was 
bearing  to  the  east,  until  the  long  shadow  that 
had  been  traveling  at  his  left  side  was  now 
flung  straight  behind  him.  In  a  few  more  min 
utes  he  was  bearing  south  with  his  shadow 
stretching  away  to  the  right;  and,  in  yet  an 
other  half  hour,  he  was  following  his  own  black 
image  on  the  sand  due  west.  Then,  with  the 
sweat  breaking  out  upon  him,  he  stopped  dead 
under  a  giant  cactus ;  for  he  saw  a  double  series 
of  footprints  ahead  of  him ;  he  had  come  back 
to  the  starting  point  again. 

""[10] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


His  wanderings  last  night  must  have  been 
ended  by  a  complete  circle.  There  was  the 
slight  hollow  in  the  sand  where  he  had  rested 
under  the  cactus,  and  the  blood-stained  band 
age  that  he  had  discarded. 

Of  course,  he  had  missed  some  point  where 
the  footprints  broke  off  in  another  direction, 
probably  over  rocky  ground,  where  they  had 
left  no  trace.  He  set  off  again,  more  quickly 
now,  following  the  double  trail  of  four  foot 
prints,  but  glancing  to  left  and  right  like  a 
hawk.  He  could  see  no  sign  of  any  departure 
from  the  track.  Inexorably  it  swung  him 
round  to  the  east,  and  his  black  shadow,  short 
ening  as  the  sun  mounted,  swung  behind  him 
again.  Inexorably  it  turned  him  to  the  south, 
and  the  shadow  ambled  beside  him.  Then, 
westward  again,  leaning  forward  and  trying 
to  overtake  that  dwindling  mockery  of  him 
self,  he  hurried  on  till  the  giant  cactus  halted 
him  once  more,  and  he  saw  a  three-fold  trail 
of  six  footprints  leading  to  the  northeast,  be 
yond  the  blood-stained  strip  of  cotton. 

__ 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


It  affected  him  queerly,  with  that  sensation 
of  having  passed  through  it  all  before  in  some 
previous  existence,  the  sensation  which  scien 
tists  tell  us  is  no  more  mysterious  in  its  origin 
than  Jim  Baxter's  circular  trail.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  slight  shock  of  the  sensation  that  dis 
tracted  him  at  precisely  the  most  important 
point  of  his  round,  as  a  conjurer  distracts  the 
attention  of  his  audience  at  the  critical  mo 
ment.  Behind  the  cactus  there  was  a  stretch 
of  firm  ground  that  took  no  impression  of 
footprints.  On  the  other  side  of  this,  fifty 
yards  away,  if  he  had  explored  it,  Baxter 
would  have  come  upon  another  trail  of  foot 
prints  leading  due  south;  for  the  railway  lay 
to  the  south  of  him.  The  simple  fact  that  the 
divergence  from  the  circle  occurred  at  his 
starting  point,  prevented  him  from  looking  for 
it  on  his  return.  He  sat  down  with  his  back 
to  the  cactus  and  tried  to  think  out  his  best 
course. 

He  drew  a  picture  of  the  train  in  the  desert 
dust,  indicating  the  points  of  the  compass,  and 

[12] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


vainly  trying  to  stimulate  his  memory  by  the 
process.  But  he  could  remember  only  abso 
lutely  unimportant  things,  the  indignant  face 
of  the  clergyman,,  the  startled  group  from 
whom  he  had  snatched  the  water-bottles,  the 
face  of  the  lanky  Western  girl  who  had  fed 
her  horse  with  sugar. 

He  had  not  even  the  slightest  instinctive 
preference  now  with  regard  to  the  direction 
he  should  choose.  He  tried  to  think  it  out, 
writh  a  view  to  possible  failure  on  his  first  at 
tempt.  At  the  outside,  the  railway  could  not 
be  more  than  forty  miles  to  the  north  or  south 
of  him,  probably  not  nearly  so  much,  allow 
ing  for  all  his  detours.  If  he  struck  for  the 
south  at  his  first  attempt,  he  ought  to  cover 
that  distance  in  twelve  hours.  Then,  if  there 
were  no  sign  of  the  railway,  it  would  be  cer 
tain  that  it  lay  to  the  north  of  him,  probably 
not  more  than  eighty  miles  distant.  This 
would  mean,  allowing  for  rest,  at  least  three 
days  and  nights.  By  economizing  his  strength 
in  every  way,  taking  things  quietly  during  the 

[13] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


heat,  and  putting  on  speed  at  night,  he 
thought  he  should  be  able  to  do  it.  His  sup 
plies  would  last  him  for  that  time,  if  he  could 
only  steer  a  straight  course.  A  memory  came 
to  him  from  a  familiar  tale.  He  took  a  silver 
dollar  from  his  pocket,  and  tossed  it  into  the 
air.  He  would  leave  the  decision  to  his  gods. 
Heads  north.  Tails  south.  It  was  at  any 
rate  even  chances  that  he  would  strike  the  right 
course  at  his  first  attempt.  Heads  it  was.  He 
rose  to  his  feet  cheerfully,  and  strode  off  due 
north,  leaving  the  railway  farther  behind  him 
at  every  stride. 


[14] 


CHAPTER  III 


At  the  end  of  that  day  he  was  beginning  to 
feel  almost  sure  that  he  had  taken  the  wrong 
direction,  for  he  had  traveled  rapidly  and 
steered  a  much  straighter  course  than  on  the 
preceding  night,  but  it  grew  dark  before  he 
was  quite  certain.  He  was  afraid  of  going 
astray  again  after  nightfall,  and,  as  soon  as  he 
lost  his  bearings,  he  stopped,  took  his  first  ra 
tions  from  the  basket,  and  prepared  to  sleep. 
But  for  a  long  time,  sleep  refused  to  visit  him. 
His  allowance  of  food  and  water  had  been  too 
small.  When  at  last  he  dropped  off  into  a 
light  doze,  it  was  troubled  with  dreams, — the 
faces  of  his  old  associates,  his  arrest,  and  wan 
derings,  endless  wanderings,  through  desert 
circles  that  always  brought  him  back  to  one 
awful  grotesque  cactus,  with  a  black  hunched 
shadow  squatting  at  its  foot  like  a  mocking 

[15] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


goblin.  .  .  .  The  faces  of  the  people  in  the 
train  returned  to  him  .  .  .  the  face  of  the  girl 
at  the  wayside  station,  a  dry-skinned  face, 
tanned  with  western  sun,  and  aquiline  almost 
as  an  Indian's.  Foolish  and  selfish,  as  all  her 
kind,  she  would  feed  her  horse  with  sugar, 
though  cities  were  wasted  with  famine.  He 
hated  her  with  that  nightmare  hatred  of  the 
small  hours.  He  was  pursued  again  by  some 
one  mounted  on  a  horse,  the  horse  that  she  had 
been  feeding.  .  .  .  The  galloping  hoof-beats 
came  nearer.  They  thundered  in  his  ears.  He 
woke,  and  sat  bolt  upright.  Fifty  yards  away, 
a  figure  mounted  on  a  black  horse  went  sweep 
ing  by,  like  a  maned  and  wind-blown  cloud, 
gigantic  against  the  stars.  He  leapt  to  his 
feet,  uncertain  whether  it  was  one  of  his  pur 
suers  or  not.  In  a  few  moments  it  had  dis 
appeared  into  the  night;  but,  for  some  time 
afterwards,  he  heard  the  galloping  hoof -beats 
ringing  over  the  firm  ground  or  thudding 
softly  over  sand. 

When  daylight  returned,  he  examined  the 

[16] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


ground  to  discover  whether  that  shadowy  rider 
had  passed  him  only  in  a  dream.  But  the 
hoof  prints  were  clear;  and,  as  they  led  to  the 
northwest,  he  discarded  his  former  plan  and 
decided  to  follow  them.  By  midday,  he  was 
convinced  that  they  could  not  have  been  made 
by  one  of  his  pursuers,  for  there  was  no  sign 
of  the  railway;  but  the  trail  struck  straight  as 
an  arrow  on  its  original  course.  Baxter  felt 
sure  now  that  he  was  following  some  one  who 
knew  his  way,  and  that,  before  long,  over  the 
next  blue  ridge,  perhaps,  he  would  come  to 
some  ranch  on  the  fringes  of  civilization. 

In  his  new  optimism,  he  took  a  little  more 
than  his  allowance  of  water  and  food,  and 
pressed  on  eagerly;  but,  as  his  shadow  length 
ened  eastward,  he  began  to  doubt  again.  The 
hoofprints  became  irregular  and  blurred  as 
though  the  horse  had  been  dragging  as  heavily 
as  himself.  Once  he  came  on  a  confusion  of 
marks  near  a  cactus.  He  examined  them 
closely.  The  rider  had  evidently  dismounted 
for  a  time.  The  cactus  had  been  cut  curiously 

[17] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


as  though  with  a  small  knife.  Several  of  the 
fronds  were  lying  on  the  ground.  They  ap 
peared  to  have  been  cut  open.  The  pulp  had 
been  scraped  out.  Others  looked  as  if  the 
horse  had  been  feeding  upon  them.  .  .  . 

On  the  farther  edge  of  this  trampled  patch 
of  ground,  Baxter  discovered  the  footprints  of 
the  rider,  clearly  marked.  They  were  the 
footprints  of  a  woman. 

He  could  think  of  no  explanation,  but  set 
himself  doggedly  once  more  to  follow  the  trail 
into  those  heat-shaken,  wine-colored  distances. 
All  day,  against  a  pearly  horizon,  he  had 
watched  three  mesas  like  lopped  and  battered 
pyramids  of  shining  mauve  and  shadowy  violet 
receding  before  him.  About  an  hour  before 
sunset  he  saw  that  he  was  really  approaching 
them;  for,  though  the  light  was  mellowing, 
they  slowly  sharpened  before  him  into  curi 
ously  stratified  red  sandstone  rocks  casting 
unending  shadows  to  the  east  across  a  milk- 
white  plain.  At  their  broken  bases  he  lost  the 
trail  for  a  while,  and  went  groping  for  it 

[18] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


among  the  tumbled  fragments  of  a  petrified 
forest.  He  stumbled  over  massive  logs  of 
jasper  and  agate,  broken  here  and  there,  like 
quartz,  into  surfaces  that  might  be  polished  by 
the  jeweller  to  show  all  the  exquisite  graining 
of  the  original  wood  translated  into  lucent 
reds  and  yellows,  or  clouds  of  mossy  green, 
like  living  seaweed  afloat  within  the  clear 
stone.  He  groped  among  drifted  boughs  of 
rough  opal,  boughs  that  had  borne  green 
leaves  and  dipped  under  nesting  birds  in  the 
mesozoic  age.  He  wandered  there,  in  the 
midst  of  that  desert  immortality,  the  creature 
of  a  day,  bathed  with  the  colors  of  the  sunset, 
groping  for  the  lost  trail  to  his  own  shadowy 
world,  a  world  that  seemed  almost  as  far  away 
in  space  now  as  those  old  woods  in  time.  .  .  . 
Darkness  ended  his  search.  He  cut  down 
his  allowance  of  food  and  water  to  balance 
the  error  of  the  morning,  and  passed  his  sec 
ond  night  under  the  desert  stars,  amongst  that 
terrible  and  beautiful  company  from  a  van 
ished  age. 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


Perhaps  he  slept  and  dreamed.  Perhaps 
he  had  grown  light-headed  from  the  heat  of 
the  day,  mental  stress,  and  his  physical  priva 
tions.  Certain  it  is  that  during  the  night  he 
wandered  through  wilder  regions  than  any 
man  ever  explored  by  day.  When  the  light 
returned  and  he  discovered  the  trail  again,  he 
followed  it  like  a  man  in  a  trance,  haunted  by 
the  things  he  had  seen. 

Once,  in  broad  daylight,  he  could  have 
sworn  that  he  saw  a  gigantic  Sphinx,  an 
Indian  Sphinx,  with  painted  face,  and  the 
long  body  of  an  enormous  leopard  crouched 
before  him  among  the  sand-hills.  He  saw  the 
long  flanks  undulating  as  she  breathed  in  the 
palpitating  heat.  It  was  not  until  he  was  near 
enough  to  touch  those  gigantic  paws  of  vol 
canic  rock  so  curiously  molded  and  corroded 
under  the  red  igneous  column  of  the  neck  that 
he  was  able  to  break  the  spell  with  an  oath  at 
his  own  folly. 

The   sun   was   high   overhead   as   he   went 

*          [20] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


stumbling  down  a  wide  valley,  dry  and  dead 
as  a  valley  of  they  moon — for  even  the  cactus 
refused  to  grow  here — but  filled  with  a  heat 
more  ferocious  than  that  of  the  rocky  levels 
behind  it.  The  blinding  sunlight  struck  up  at 
him  from  the  crumbling  bed,  where  thousands 
of  years  ago,  perhaps,  a  river  had  flowed. 
Sometimes  the  ground  under  his  feet  was 
white  and  powdery  as  with  the  dust  of  bones. 
Sometimes  it  was  hard  as  iron.  Always,  in 
every  direction,  it  denied  escape  from  the  ter 
rible  heat.  There  were  moments  when,  in  his 
desire  to  escape  from  it,  he  felt  mad  impulses 
to  fling  himself  down  and  try  and  burrow  into 
the  earth.  He  had  passed  beyond  the  stage 
wrhen  it  was  possible  to  save  himself  by  rest 
ing.  Any  change  was  for  the  better;  but  real 
change  never  came.  Once,  at  a  little  distance, 
he  saw  a  dark  object  lying  on  the  ground  be 
fore  him,  an  object  that  he  felt,  with  a  kind  of 
dazed  wonder,  had  no  right  to  be  there.  He 
staggered  up  to  it,  and  discovered  that  it  was 

[21] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


the  dead  body  of  a  horse.  It  seemed  to  have 
no  significance,  although  it  could  not  have 
been  dead  for  many  hours.  It  lay  there  as  if 
it  had  been  dropped  from  another  planet. 


[22] 


CHAPTER  IV 


He  was  unable  to  think  clearly  about  it,  for 
the  heat  buffeted  him  like  the  gloves  of  an  in 
visible  boxer,  and  he  saw  everything  through 
a  suffused  red  glow.  He  stumbled  on  blindly. 
The  blood  sang  in  his  ears,  now  with  the  drone 
of  a  mosquito  (though  even  the  smallest  of 
winged  creatures  shunned  that  barren  region) , 
and  now  with  the  dreadful  mockery  of  flowing 
water.  Twice  he  stopped  and  listened  to  that 
phantom  river.  His  senses  were  beginning  to 
deceive  him,  or  the  buttes  and  cones  of  rock 
around  him  were  becoming  insubstantial.  They 
assumed  fantastic  shapes,  forming  and  dissolv 
ing,  now  like  clouds,  now  like  phantoms  of  men 
and  women.  He  shouted  at  them,  and  he  did 
not  know  whether  it  was  his  own  voice  echoing 
back,  or  whether  they  were  talking  to  him. 

Once,  in  one  of  his  attempts  to  escape  from 
the  furnace  of  sunlight,  he  tried  to  creep  under 

[23] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


the  projecting  ledge  of  rock  that  cast  a  narrow 
strip  of  shadow;  but  even  there  the  earth  was 
as  hot  as  the  iron  floor  of  an  oven,  and  it  was 
only  his  fatigue  that  prevented  him  from  stum 
bling  to  his  feet  and  going  on.  But  it  was 
something  to  escape  the  direct  rays.  He  lay 
there  for  perhaps  an  hour,  perhaps  for  two. 
He  had  lost  all  sense  of  time  and  felt  that  he 
was  being  absorbed  into  the  timelessness  of  the 
unchanging  desert  itself. 

When  at  last  he  resumed  his  journey  he  was 
a  little  weaker  than  before  his  rest.  He  seemed 
to  have  the  dreadful  weights  of  a  nightmare  at 
tached  to  his  feet;  and  at  times  he  felt  that  it 
would  be  easier  to  crawl  on  his  hands  and  knees 
than  to  walk  upright.  Then  Nature  began  to 
drug  him  with  the  merciful  poisons  of  his  own 
fatigue.  She  touched  his  brain  with  the  de 
ceptive  calm  and  lucidity  that  come  to  the 
sufferer  when  the  morphia  begins  to  work. 

He  was  groping  along  a  narrow  gully  when 
he  heard  a  deep  booming  note  echoing  from 
the  rocky  walls  above  him.  A  moment  later 

[24]    


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


he  recognized  it  distinctly  as  the  lowing  of 
oxen  from  a  deep  hollow  in  front.  He  hur 
ried  on  to  the  edge  where  the  ground  dropped 
steeply  down  to  it,  and  a  few  hundred  yards 
below  him  he  saw  distinctly  the  glint  of  a 
water-pool,  a  ring  of  ox-carts,  and  little 
groups  of  men,  women,  and  children,  resting 
beside  them.  There  was  nothing  vague  or 
visionary  in  the  picture.  It  was  all  as  sharply 
defined,  in  that  dry  brightness,  as  if  he  were 
looking  through  reversed  field-glasses  at  ob 
jects  only  a  few  feet  away.  The  pool,  dimin 
ished  by  distance,  was  bright  and  sharp  as  the 
silver  coin  that  he  had  tossed  to  decide  his 
course.  The  faces  were  clear  cut  as  cameos; 
he  had  a  vague  sense  that  they  were  too  real 
to  be  true,  like  figures  on  a  stage,  figures  of  a 
vanished  period.  He  could  see  the  red  and 
blue  shirts  of  the  men,  their  long  boots,  the 
occasional  flash  of  the  sun  on  a  pistol  or  a 
bowie  knife  in  their  belts.  He  tried  to  run 
towards  them,  but  he  was  at  the  end  of  his 
strength,  and  he  fell  on  his  knees.  A  mist 

[25] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


came  over  his  eyes,  and  he  heard  the  shrill  cry 
of  a  woman,— "Will  Manly!  Thank  God, 
there's  Will  Manly !" 

The  people  in  the  corral  had  seen  him.  He 
heard  the  patter  of  their  feet  approaching, 
though  he  himself  could  see  no  more  and  had 
fallen  forward  in  semi-consciousness.  He 
heard  them  gathering  round  him  with  the 
rustle  of  a  flock  of  sheep. 

"It's  not  Will  Manly,"  he  heard  a  voice 
say.  Then  hands  raised  him  to  his  feet  again. 
Arms  supported  him,  and  he  was  led,  totter 
ing,  down  the  slope  to  the  water-pool.  Some 
one  put  a  cup  of  brackish  water  to  his  heat- 
cracked  lips,  but  it  abated  his  thirst  as  little 
as  a  raindrop  could  irrigate  the  desert.  For 
a  moment  only  it  gave  him  back  his  speech. 

"More!"  he  croaked,  like  a  raven.  But,  for 
the  present,  wisely  perhaps,  more  was  with 
held. 

He  was  conscious  of  being  Jed  gently  to  a 
resting  place,  sheltered  from  the  sun,  by  one 

[26] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


of  the  wagons,  he  thought.  Then  he  lost  con 
sciousness  altogether. 

It  was  dark  when  he  awoke  from  that  death 
like  swoon.  The  stars  glittered  overhead, 
hard  and  brilliant  as  diamonds,  and  their 
spears  of  light  were  as  intolerable  to  the 
wounded  nerves  of  his  eyes  as  the  rays  of  the 
sun.  His  rescuers  were  seated  in  little  groups 
around  the  corral.  The  largest  of  these 
groups  was  only  a  few  feet  away,  and  he  heard 
them  talking,  in  tones  that  seemed  oddly  fa 
miliar,  like  the  language  of  old  ballads. 

"He  looks  as  if  he  has  come  a  long  way," 
said  a  man  in  a  red  shirt,  who  appeared  to  be 
the  leader  of  the  party.  "If  he  can  guide  us 
to  any  ranch  within  fifty  miles,  I  think  the 
cattle  can  do  it.  Oherwise,  we  must  wait  till 
Rogers  and  Manly  come  back  with  help." 

"Twenty  days  and  nights  we've  waited  al 
ready,  Asabel  Bennett,"  said  a  tall  dark 
woman,  rocking  a  child  in  her  arms.  "Rogers 
and  Manly  are  desert  dust  by  now.  If  this 
man  knows  of  any  ranch  within  five  hundred 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


miles,  and  can  set  us  on  our  way,  in  God's 
name,  hitch  the  oxen  up,  and  let  us  go!  We 
can  leave  a  message  here  for  Rogers  and 
Manly,  if  they  should  ever  return.  Give  the 
children  a  chance.  Every  day  that  we  wait 
here  the  chance  grows  smaller.  We  must  kill 
another  of  the  oxen  soon  for  food;  and  what 
shall  we  do  when  we've  killed  them  all?  It 
would  be  better  to  be  killing  them  on  our  way 
across  the  desert." 

"No!  No!"  cried  the  two  older  women  to 
gether.  "Don't  leave  the  water!  Bide  by  the 
water!" 

"You're  right,"  quavered  an  old  man,  sup 
porting  them.  "It's  the  first  water  we've  seen 
in  all  this  hell,  and  we  shall  never  find  any 


more." 


"We  can  fill  our  bottles,  and  let  the  cattle 
drink  the  rest  before  we  go,"  said  the  first 
woman  scornfully. 

"Ah,  yes,  but  the  water-bottles  will  give  out 
again.  Bide  by  the  water-springs  you  know, 
that's  my  motto,"  said  the  old  man. 

[28] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"If  it  runs  out  again,"  said  the  dark  woman, 
"we  can  kill  one  of  the  oxen,  and  you  can  lap 
its  blood.  Look,  the  stranger  is  awake.  Ques 
tion  him,  Asabel.  Here,  give  him  water.  It 
will  help  him  to  speak." 

Baxter  saw  her  shadowy  figure  stooping 
between  him  and  the  stars.  She  knelt  at  his 
side,  offering  him  a  cup  of  water.  He  sat  up 
and  took  it  with  trembling  fingers,  emptied  it 
at  a  draught,  and  leaned  back  against  the 
wheel  of  the  wagon. 

"We  want  you  to  help  us,"  said  the  dark 
woman,  while  the  other  groups  crept  closer, 
and  seated  themselves  in  a  half -circle  around 
them,  as  if  to  hear  an  eastern  tale.  "Did  you 
come  here  from  a  ranch?"  the  woman  con 
tinued. 

Baxter  shook  his  head.  He  tried  to  tell 
them,  though  his  tongue  stumbled  over  the 
words,  that  there  had  been  a  freight-wreck,  he 
had  wandered  too  far  from  the  train  and  had 
lost  his  way. 

They  did  not  seem  to  understand. 

[29] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"Train?  Train?"  said  Asabel  Bennett. 
There  was  a  mutter  from  the  listening  circle. 
"He  means  caravan." 

"Were  you  with  a  caravan?"  said  Bennett. 

Baxter  shook  his  head  again. 

"No,"  he  said.  "It  was  a  train.  The 
freight-train  ahead  of  us  went  off  the  line." 
He  began  to  speak  rapidly,  giving  them  fur 
ther  details. 

"I  do  not  understand  this  man's  tale,"  said 
Asabel  Bennett  at  last,  turning  to  the  others. 
"Either  his  mind  is  wandering,  or  he  comes 
from  a  place  where  they  speak  a  different  lan 
guage  from  ours." 

The  dark  woman  was  peering  curiously  at 
Baxter's  clothes.  She  fingered  his  sleeve. 

"Where  is  your  home?"  she  said. 

"Los  Angeles." 

"Life  must  be  difficult  in  those  lonely 
places,"  she  murmured.  "There  are  not  many 
settlers  there,  I  suppose?" 

Haltingly,  as  a  man  describes  the  home  that 
he  never  expects  to  see  again,  Baxter  began 

[30] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


to  talk  of  his  city,  with  its  five  hundred  thou 
sand  inhabitants.  He  murmured  of  lighted 
streets,  and  the  sunset  road  through  gardens 
and  orchards  to  Santa  Monica  and  the  sea. 
His  listeners  must  be  distraught  by  their  suf 
ferings,  he  thought,  for  they  did  not  seem  to 
understand  one-half  of  what  he  said  or  to  be 
lieve  the  other  half.  They  looked  at  him  with 
pity  in  their  eyes.  He  tried  to  speak  very 
lucidly  and  simply  as  if  he  were  telling  tales  to 
very  small  children,  and,  seeing  that  they 
failed  to  grasp  one  of  his  very  simplest  state 
ments  about  motor-cars,  he  fumbled  in  the 
basket  beside  him  for  the  Los  Angeles  Sunday 
newspaper,  which  contained,  amongst  other 
things,  an  elaborate  picture  section.  He  did 
not  know  that  the  news  section  contained  an 
account  of  the  crime  for  which  he  was  wanted 
by  the  police. 

"Bring  the  light!"  cried  Asabel  Bennett. 

A  small  boy  dived  under  the  shadows  of  the 
wagon,  and  came  running  back  with  a  lighted 
lantern.  It  was  placed  on  the  ground  in  the 

[81] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


midst  of  the  circle.  Asabel  Bennett  spread  the 
paper  out  before  it,  and  began  to  read,  with 
the  others  peering  over  his  shoulders.  Baxter 
still  sat  leaning  back  against  the  wagon,  and 
watching  the  ring  of  absorbed  faces  against  the 
background  of  the  unchanging  desert  cliffs, 
and  the  high,  unchanging  stars.  The  faces 
looked  bewildered. 


[32] 


CHAPTER  V 


"This  is  a  very  strange  fairy-tale,"  said 
Asabel  Bennett  at  last.  "We  have  all  of  us 
had  our  visions  of  the  Golden  West.  It  is  a 
good  tale — so  far  as  I  understand  it — but  it 
tells  only  of  what  things  will  be  like  many 
years  from  now.  There  is  the  date  at  the  head 
of  the  paper,  August  80,  19—.  By  that 
time,  Los  Angeles  may  have  earned  its  name 
and  become  a  kind  of  paradise;  but  it  is  small 
comfort  for  us  poor  pioneers  of  1849." 

"But  it's  true!  I  swear  it's  true!"  cried 
Baxter  vehemently,  drawing  all  those  hunger 
ing  eyes  back  to  his  face.  He  felt  vaguely  that 
unless  he  could  establish  the  reality  of  his  world 
he  would  be  submerged  in  this  desert  timeless- 
ness,  and  doomed  to  grope  eternally  through 
its  unchanging  circles.  He  felt  like  a  man  in 
the  delirium  of  a  fever,  fighting  to  retain  one 
distant  glimpse  of  the  old  sane  existence,  fight 
ing  to  get  back  of  it. 

[33] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"See  here!"  he  cried,  fumbling  in  his  pocket 
again.  "Here's  the  coin  I  tossed  up  when  I 
was  wondering  which  way  to  choose.  Look  at 
the  date  on  it!"  and  he  tossed  the  bright  dollar 
to  the  group  about  the  lantern.  His  eyes  were 
still  affected,  he  supposed,  by  that  last  blinding 
day  of  his  journey,  for  the  coin  seemed  to  skim 
right  through  that  dark  group  of  men  and 
women,  as  a  moonbeam  slips  through  dark 
water.  Yet  some  one  caught  and  held  it;  and 
there  were  muttered  exclamations  as  it  passed 
from  hand  to  hand,  irradiating  their  hollow 
palms  when  they  turned  it  to  the  light. 

"There  is  no  time  in  the  desert,"  said  the  tall 
woman  who  had  given  him  the  water.  Her 
lean  dark  face  had  the  look  of  an  Indian 
Sphinx  against  the  stars.  "Perhaps  he  speaks 
the  truth." 

The  old  man  who  wished  to  stay  by  the 
water-pool  was  still  poring  over  a  section  of 
the  paper.  His  eyes  became  suspicious.  He 
looked  up  quickly. 

"What  is  your  name,  stranger?"  he  asked. 

[34] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"James  L.  Baxter." 

"Listen  to  this,  friends,"  the  old  man  cried 
shrilly.  "This  is  how  men  love  their  paradise, 
when  God  has  given  them  the  free  run  of  it." 
He  read  slowly  and  painfully,  following  the 
lines  with  one  finger,  like  a  schoolboy: — 

DYNAMITE  PLOT  DISCOVERED 

The  authorities  have  obtained  evidence  recently  of  a 
wide-spread  plot  to  extend  the  theories  of  Lenin  to  this 
country.  The  extremist  leaders  of  the  I.  W.  W.  have 
for  some  time  been  advocating  the  overthrow  of  all 
existing  forms  of  Government  by  violence  and  blood 
shed;  and  the  first  step  to  this  end  was  to  be  taken 
during  a  deliberately  provoked  general  strike  within  the 
next  few  weeks.  The  police  are  now  actively  searching 
for  the  leaders  of  the  revolutionaries,  amongst  whom 
James  L.  Baxter,  a  native  of  Los  Angeles,  is  the  most 
violent  in  his  aims.  It  is  reported  that  he  is  responsible 
for  a  bomb-throwing  plot  aimed  at  some  of  the  leading 
citizens  of  the  State.  Among  those  marked  for  assas 
sination,  at  the  time  of  the  general  strike,  was  Senator 
John  Reddington. 

A  momentary  ripple  of  mocking  laughter 
broke  from  the  lips  of  the  listeners. 

[35] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"Did  you  want  to  destroy  the  paradise  of 
which  you  have  been  telling  us?"  said  the  dark 
woman. 

Baxter  tried  to  explain,  pouring  out  words 
almost  as  eloquently  as  if  he  had  been  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Reds,  but,  at  the  end  of  every 
sentence  he  heard  that  low  melancholy  laugh 
ter,  withering  his  old  insanities,  till  it  seemed 
unbelievable  that  they  had  ever  bloomed. 

"We  are  the  pioneers — in  the  desert,"  said 
Asabel  Bennett  at  last,  and  his  voice  was  as 
dry  as  the  whisper  of  a  dead  cactus  frond  in  a 
desert  wind.  "We  should  like  to  know  the 
truth  about  our  promised  land.  You  say  that 
there  is  no  man  so  poor  that  he  cannot  ride 
from  end  to  end  of  your  state  in  these  magi 
cal  carriages  that  move  without  horses?  You 
say  that  many  of  your  laborers  possess  these 
carriages.  There  are  pictures  of  them  in  this 
paper,  driving  their  wives  and  children  through 
boundless  orchards.  But  in  the  world  that  we 
know,  even  the  fabulously  rich,  even  the  great 
est  emperors  of  Europe  could  not  do  these 

[36] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


things;  and  any  one  who  promised  them  these 
miracles  would  be  thought  mad.  Surely  your 
poor  men  are  very  rich  in  some  things.  But 
I  understand  they  complain.  What  is  their 
grievance?" 

"Ah,  you  don't  understand,"  said  Baxter, 
lamely  trying  to  explain — or  so  it  seemed  both 
to  his  hearers  and  himself — that  the  cars  of  the 
rich  were  better  upholstered  than  those  of  the 
poor. 

The  shadowy  circle  of  the  pioneers  looked  at 
him  pityingly. 

"So  it  is  not  because  you  are  poorer  than 
even  the  richest  we  ever  knew,"  said  Asabel 
Bennett,  "but  because  others  are  richer  than 
yourselves,  that  you  wish  to  destroy?"  Again 
the  low  withering  laugh  went  whispering 
round.  "These  newspapers,"  he  continued, 
"where  every  morning  you  find  all  that  has 
been  happening  in  the  remotest  corners  of  the 
world  flashed  to  you  by  lightning,  so  that  you 
sit  like  gods  contemplating  the  whole  planet, — 
the  wealthiest  princes  of  our  world  would  give 

[37] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


half  their  possessions  to  see  a  miracle  like  that ! 
But  you  tell  me,  that  for  a  few  cents  these 
things  are  open  to  all,  and  that  all  the  won 
ders  of  the  world  are  passed  every  night  before 
the  eyes  of  the  down-trodden  in — how  do  you 
call  them? — your  Picture  Palaces?  You  tell 
me  that  armies  march  before  your  proletariat 
there  as  they  have  never  marched  before  kings, 
and  that  navies  dip  their  flags  and  salute  you 
nightly  in  those  halls.  These  things  do  not 
appear  marvelous  to  you.  They  have  been 
staled  to  you  by  custom.  But  how  would  you 
like  to  show  those  wonders  to  your  children, 
Janet  Rogers?  And  what  is  your  grievance 
here,  James  Baxter?" 

Once  again  the  revolutionary  leader  tried  to 
mutter  something,  but  it  sounded  as  foolish  to 
himself  as  it  did  to  his  hearers.  They  under 
stood  him  to  say  that  everybody  could  not  sit 
in  the  best  seats,  and  that  some  things  cost 
more  than  others. 

"So  again,  although  every  one  of  you  is 
richer  in  these  things  than  any  emperor  that 

[38] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


we  knew,"  said  Asabel  Bennett,  "it  is  only  be 
cause  a  few  others  have  more  than  yourselves 
that  you  wish  to  destroy  that  happy  state?" 

And  again  the  low  mocking  laughter  went 
round;  but,  this  time,  James  Baxter  himself 
helped  to  swell  that  strange  ironic  chorus. 

"And  these  hospitals,"  Asabel  Bennett  con 
tinued,  "where  miracles  of  surgery  are  per 
formed  every  day,  and  where  tens  of  thousands 
of  your  'proletariat'  are  saved  by  doctors 
(members,  I  understand,  of  what  you  call  the 
'bourgeoisie' ) .  Man,  do  you  know  that  Croesus 
himself  could  not  command  that  healing  skill 
in  our  world!" 

"Ah,  but  there  are  some  in  my  world  to-day 
who  can  command  more,"  answered  Baxter. 
"They  are  rich  enough  to  be  nursed  privately." 

They  all  laughed  together  again. 

"So,  finally,  it  is  not  because  you  are  poor," 
said  Asabel  Bennett,  "but  because  othersxhave 
more  than  yourself,  that  you  wished  to  destroy 
your  world,  and  came  into  this  hell?  Man, 
man,  that  is  not  love  of  your  kind!  That  is 

[39] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


the  black  envy  of  a  shrunken  brain  and  a  shriv 
eled  heart!  It  is  not  the  democratic  passion 
of  which  your  revolutionaries  rave ;  it  is  a  blind 
hatred  of  the  good  that  all  can  share;  and  a 
desire  (as  you  must  know  if  you  honestly 
search  your  own  mind)  for  something  more  to 
accrue  to  yourself  alone.  It  is  because  all  can 
share  your  good  that  you  despise  it. 

"We  are  the  pioneers,  and  we  shall  never 
live  to  see  the  miracles  of  which  you  have  told 
us.  We  shall  never  reach  your  City  of  the 
Angels.  But  we  can  plainly  see  that  the  least 
of  your  world  is  richer  than  the  greatest  in 
ours.  You  are  revolting  against  Nature  her 
self,  if  you  revolt  at  every  inequality.  You 
will  never  make  men  all  of  one  height  or  equal 
strength.  The  rain  will  fall  in  one  place  and 
avoid  another  till  the  end  of  time.  The  moun 
tainous  inequalities  that  seem  so  great  to  you 
when  you  stand  at  their  base  and  fix  your  eyes 
upon  them  are  so  small  in  relation  to  the  whole 
field  of  the  world  that,  if  you  leveled  them  out 
over  it,  you  would  not  add  the  thousandth  part 

[40] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


of  a  grain  to  any  man's  portion.  Is  it  worth 
while  to  halt  that  march  of  the  whole  race  and 
destroy  the  State  that  has  already  achieved  so 
much,  in  order  that  you  may  fight  the  indom 
itable  variety  of  Nature  and  persuade  the 
clouds  that  they  must  rain  equally  over  every 
spot  on  earth? 

"Even  between  ourselves  there  is  one  in 
equality  that  you  can  never  adjust.  We  are 
the  pioneers,  talking  to  you  here  in  the  time 
less  and  unchanging  desert,  where  thousands 
have  laid  them  down  to  die  on  their  way  to 
your  paradise.  How  are  you  going  to  repay 
them?  You  talk  of  your  rights.  Have  you  no 
debts?  Do  you  owe  nothing  to  the  bleached 
bones  in  this  Valley  of  Death,  that  you  feel  so 
free  to  throw  over  all  duties  for  random  rob 
bery  and  murder?" 

The  man  in  the  red  shirt  spoke  with  the  glow 
of  an  ancient  prophet.  Baxter  struggled  to  his 
feet  with  his  hands  to  his  throat  as  if  he  were 
choking. 

"Say  no  more,"  he  cried.    "The  desert  itself 

[41] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


— this  blind  brutal  desert — has  been  enough  to 
show  me  that  I  am  up  against  something  more 
than  man.  Something  that  wipes  out  cities 
with  lava,  and  wrecks  ships  at  sea,  and  kills 
men  of  hunger  and  thirst;  or  when  it  can't  do 
that,  robs  them  slowly  of  their  powers  and 
makes  them  grow  old  and  brings  their  dust 
back  to  the  dust.  I  know  now  that  I  have  been 
attributing  those  universal  injustices  to  my 
neighbor.  I  know  now,  that  when  men  are  lost 
in  the  desert  they  have  no  time  to  fight.  It  is 
only  when  they  have  conquered  it,  and  become 
a  little  prosperous,  perhaps  a  little  too  pros 
perous,  that  they  begin  to  kill  one  another. 
Then  the  desert  comes  in  again,  and  wins.  I 
didn't  know  my  enemy." 

"Come  and  see  one  that  you  mistook  for  an 
enemy,"  said  Asabel  Bennett,  picking  up  the 
lantern. 

The  tall  woman  and  the  red-shirted  pioneer 
took  each  an  arm  of  the  limp  figure  in  the 
white  drill  suit,  raised  him  to  his  feet  and  led 
him  tottering  across  the  corral. 

[42] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


A  woman  rose  from  the  shadow  of  a  wagon 
on  the  further  side. 

"Tread  softly.  She's  sleeping,"  she  whis 
pered,  pointing  to  a  dark  recumbent  figure  at 
her  feet. 

Asabel  Bennett  swung  his  lantern  forward  a 
little,  so  that  its  faint  light  fell  for  a  moment 
on  the  sleeper's  face.  It  was  the  face  of  the 
young  woman  that  Baxter  had  seen  at  the  way 
side  station,  feeding  her  horse  with  sugar;  but, 
in  sleep,  it  was  the  face  of  a  tired  child. 


[43] 


CHAPTER  VI 


"Come  back,  and  I  will  tell  you  about  it," 
whispered  Asabel  Bennett,  and  his  voice  was 
low  and  musical  as  the  whisper  of  the  trade 
wind  among  the  palm  trees  of  Monterey. 

Baxter  followed  him  to  the  other  side  of  the 
corral. 

"We  found  her  last  night  at  the  mouth  of  the 
valley,"  Asabel  Bennett  continued,  "lying  on 
the  ground  where  her  horse  had  fallen  and 
died.  We  carried  her  down  here,  and  brought 
her  back  to  life.  She  told  us  her  tale,  as  you 
have  told  us  yours.  Her  name  is  Jean  Red- 
dington,  the  daughter  of  the  Reddington  you 
were  going  to  kill." 

"I  didn't  know  my  enemy,"  Baxter  muttered 
again. 

"Perhaps,"  said  Asabel  Bennett,  "you 
neither  of  you  knew  your  friends.  When  you 
were  pursued,  she  refused  to  let  any  one  ride 

[45] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


her  favorite  Nita  but  herself.  She  was  not 
thinking  of  you.  She  was  not  even  thinking  of 
helping  the  officers  of  the  law.  She  was  think 
ing  only  of  Nita.  So  she  rode  after  you,  with  a 
man  on  each  side  holding  onto  the  saddle.  They 
couldn't  keep  up.  When  they  let  go,  one  of 
them  fell,  and  his  shout  frightened  the  mare. 
She  bolted,  and  the  darkness  came.  Since  then, 
Jean  Reddington  has  been  leading  you  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  desert,  as  carelessly  as  she 
once  pursued  you.  Her  only  food  has  been  a 
few  bits  of  the  sugar  that  she  had  put  in  her 
pocket  some  days  ago  for  Nita,  and  she  would 
have  died  of  thirst  if  she  had  not  known  how 
to  find  the  sap  of  the  cactus.  She  is  helpless 
now,  so  there  is  at  least  the  bond  of  your  peril 
between  you.  If  ever  you  overcome  it,  try  to 
remember  what  you  learned  here.  We  are  all 
of  us  pioneers.  Each  of  us  has  to  conquer  a 
desert  and  pass  through  this  valley  of  decision. 
You  must  leave  us  now,  and  try  to  return  to 
your  own  generation.  If  you  succeed,  remem 
ber  that  we  have  only  sent  you  ahead  of  us,  as 

[46] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


we  sent  Manly  and  Rogers  ahead,  believing 
that  they  would  be  loyal  to  us,  the  pioneers." 

Again  the  strange  sensation  of  having 
passed  through  this  place  before  in  some  pre 
vious  existence  possessed  the  mind  of  Baxter 
as  he  stared  at  the  shadowy  figures  round  him. 
They  seemed  to  be  growing  more  shadowy. 

"Tell  me  the  name  of  the  valley!"  he  cried. 

"Death  Valley,"  came  the  answer,  quite 
clearly,  though  he  did  not  know  whether  it  was 
the  voice  of  that  vanishing  throng,  or  only  a 
light  stirring  of  the  desert  air.  On  that  in 
stant,  the  shadowy  folk  with  whom  he  had  been 
speaking  seemed  to  melt  into  the  purple 
shadows  of  the  cliff.  Pioneers,  wagons,  and 
cattle  melted  away  as  though  they  had  never 
been.  He  moved  forward,  stretching  out  his 
hands  as  if  to  try  and  grasp  some  substantial 
thing  in  the  vacant  air,  moved  forward  to 
where  they  had  shown  him  the  daughter  of  his 
enemy,  stretched  on  the  earth  in  a  profound 
sleep.  He  stole  quietly  to  her  side  and  looked 
at  her  face  again,  the  face  of  a  tired  child. 

[47] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


He  stood  there  for  two  or  three  minutes, 
wondering  at  the  hostility  that  the  mere  men 
tion  of  her  name  would  once  have  aroused  in 
him.  Gradually,  his  own  world  and  all  that 
had  happened  since  his  escape  came  back  to 
him.  Then  he  moved  a  few  paces  off  and  sat 
down  to  wait  for  the  dawn  and  the  waking  of 
the  sleeper. 

He  puzzled  over  all  that  had  happened  to 
him  during  that  night.  He  had  been  moving 
in  a  mirage  of  the  desert,  a  mirage  that  had 
played  tricks  with  time  as  well  as  with  space; 
but  he  knew  that  the  shadows  he  had  seen  had 
been  cast  by  realities. 

He  could  see  no  water-pool  now.  There  was 
no  sign  of  water  in  that  deadly  region,  and  he 
wondered  where  the  cup  had  been  filled  that 
the  shadows  had  placed  to  his  lips.  A  little  dis 
tance  away  he  saw  his  precious  basket  and  went 
to  examine  its  contents  again,  fearing  that  dur 
ing  his  mental  wanderings  they  might  have 
been  lost.  The  remains  of  his  food  supply 
were  still  safe.  One  of  the  water-bottles  was 

[48] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


still  unopened,  but  the  other  was  empty.  Per 
haps  it  was  his  own  hand  that,  during  his  de 
lirium,  had  put  the  cup  to  his  lips.  The 
pioneers  had  told  him  that  Jean  Reddington 
also  had  drunk  of  that  cup.  He  wondered  if 
it  were  possible.  .  .  . 

The  sleeper  woke  before  dawn.  The  recum 
bent  figure  stirred  slightly,  and  Baxter  heard 
a  faint  cry. 

He  answered  it  at  once.  "It's  all  right. 
Don't  be  afraid."  And  the  next  moment  he 
was  standing  face  to  face  with  the  daughter  of 
the  man  he  had  been  planning  to  kill. 

Baxter  saw  by  the  expression  of  her  face 
that  she  knew  him  as  the  fugitive  whom  she 
had  followed  into  the  desert,  nearly  sixty  hours 
ago ;  but  she  showed  no  fear.  No  explanations 
were  necessary.  It  was  exactly  as  if  they  were 
both  fully  acquainted  with  what  each  had  heard 
from  the  vanished  shadows  of  the  pioneers. 

There  was  only  one  difference  in  their  ex 
perience  of  those  shadows,  and  Baxter  saw  it 
at  once  in  the  strained  lines  of  her  face. 

[49] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


Neither  her  own  hands  nor  those  of  the 
pioneers  had  been  able  to  lift  any  cup  to  her 
lips  during  the  night.  Her  eyes  met  his  own 
piteously. 

"Water,"  she  whispered. 

Without  a  word  Baxter  drew  the  carefully 
guarded  water-bottle  from  the  basket,  opened 
it,  and  held  it  with  his  own  hands  to  her  lips. 
He  let  her  drink  as  much  as  he  had  been  in 
tending  to  make  his  own  daily  allowance,  then 
he  withdrew  it,  saying,  "This  is  all  that  we  have 
to  see  us  through  the  rest  of  the  journey." 

"How  far  have  we  to  go?"  she  said. 

"It  may  be  three  or  four  days  before  we 
come  to  water." 

"And  this  is  all  we  have  between  us?" 

Baxter  looked  at  her  for  a  moment.  Then 
he  pointed  to  the  neck  of  the  empty  bottle  pro 
truding  from  the  basket. 

"I  have  another  there  for  myself,"  he  said. 

"And  you  are  ready  to  give  me  half  your 
chance  of  getting  out  of  this?" 

"Don't  be  afraid,"  he  replied.    "You're  go- 

[50] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


ing  to  come  safely  through  this  trouble,  and, 
if  you  feel  up  to  it,  we'd  better  make  a  start  at 
once,  before  the  sun  begins  to  make  things 


worse." 


She  stood  still  for  a  moment,  looking  at  him. 
He  almost  wondered  for  a  moment  whether 
the  daughter  of  Senator  Reddington  was  go 
ing  to  repudiate  his  help. 

"You  don't  doubt  me?" 

"No,"  she  said.  "I  was  only  thinking  that 
the  pioneers  were  right.  I  didn't  know  my 
enemy." 

And  so,  down  the  dark  valley,  while  the 
stars  paled  and  the  highest  rocks  of  the  mesas 
began  to  smoulder  like  awful  jewels  with  the 
approaching  dawn,  those  two  strange  com 
panions,  the  stronger  aiding  the  weaker  over 
the  broken  ground,  moved  slowly  together. 


[51] 


CHAPTER  VII 


Jean  Reddington  was  so  enfeebled  by  priva 
tion  that  Baxter  soon  began  to  realize  the  hope 
lessness  of  the  attempt  to  take  her  with  him. 
The  only  chance  would  be  for  him  to  go  ahead 
as  rapidly  as  possible,  find  help,  and  return. 
He  remembered  roughly  the  geographical  sit 
uation  of  Death  Valley;  and  he  knew  that,  if 
they  followed  it,  although  it  was  probably  not 
the  shortest  route,  it  would  lead  them  in  the 
direction  of  civilization.  But  though  the  settled 
country  must  be  nearer  than  in  1849,  he  could 
see  not  the  remotest  chance  of  ever  reaching  it 
at  this  pace,  and  it  would  only  be  by  a  miracle 
that  he  could  reach  it  alone.  As  the  day  set 
the  desert  ablaze  with  crimson  and  amethyst 
and  orange,  turning  all  those  endless  rock- 
strewn  miles  of  drought  to  a  gorgeous  furnace, 
an  inferno  of  flaming  colors,  the  spirit  that  had 
once  moved  into  fanatical  rebellion  against  the 

[53] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


State,  flamed  up  in  a  new  rebellion  now  against 
a  vaster  enemy.  Every  thought  of  his  mind 
was  concentrated  on  the  new  purpose  of  sav 
ing  his  companion ;  and  though  his  reason  could 
see  no  way  of  doing  it,  whenever  Jean  Red- 
dington  looked  at  his  face  and  tried  to  read 
their  chances  there  it  seemed  to  shine  with  hope 
and  courage. 

By  noon  it  was  quite  clear  that  his  com 
panion  could  go  very  little  farther.  Hardly  a 
word  passed  between  them  as  they  walked. 
Once,  as  they  came  to  a  particularly  bad  piece 
of  broken  ground,  she  stumbled,  and  when  he 
helped  her  to  her  feet,  the  white  despair  of  her 
face  forced  him  to  a  decision.  Fifty  yards 
ahead  of  them  there  was  a  gash  at  the  foot  of 
the  cliff,  which  looked  as  if  it  would  afford  a 
shelter  from  the  sun. 

"You'll  have  to  get  out  of  this  furnace,"  he 
said ;  and  though,  a  moment  earlier,  he  had  felt 
as  if  he  himself  were  about  to  drop  with 
fatigue,  he  picked  her  up  as  if  she  had  been  a 
child  and  carried  her  to  that  deep  recess  of 

[54] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


shadow.     It  proved  to  be  a  small  cave  nearly 
twelve  feet  deep. 

He  sat  down  beside  her  while  she  rested.  I£ 
was  quite  clear  to  him  now  that  the  only  hope 
of  saving  his  companion  was  to  make  the  last 
desperate  effort  to  save  himself  without  delay; 
but  he  was  thinking  out  the  most  difficult  prob 
lem  that  any  man  could  confront.  For  a  time, 
he  shrank  from  the  idea  of  abandoning  her  in 
that  wilderness.  The  chances  of  his  success 
were  so  remote,  and  he  could  not  bear  the 
thought  of  her  dying  there  alone.  There  was  a 
still  more  difficult  point  to  decide.  If  he  left 
her  all  the  water  that  remained,  it  reduced  his 
own  chances  of  bringing  back  help,  and  yet  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  the  point  of  decid 
ing  that  he  must  take  his  share.  He  tried  to 
work  it  out  just  as  if  it  were  a  mathematical 
problem  to  find  the  proportions  that  would 
give  her  the  best  chance  of  being  saved.  He 
was  horribly  afraid  of  deceiving  himself  into 
taking  some  minute  personal  advantage;  so 
afraid  that,  when  he  made  his  decision,  he 

[55] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


falsified  his  mathematics  a  little  in  order  to 
make  quite  certain.  He  deliberately  omitted 
the  factors  of  the  exertions  that  would  be  nec 
essary  on  his  part,  and  the  comparative  shelter 
from  the  heat  that  would  be  hers. 

"There  is  only  one  thing  to  do,"  he  said  at 
last.  "You  will  have  to  wait  here  until  I  can 
come  back  with  help." 

She  looked  at  him  with  eyes  too  tired  for 
fear,  and  the  hopelessness  of  the  look  wrung 
his  heart. 

"I  shall  leave  you  half  the  water  in  this  bot 
tle,"  he  continued,  "and  that  will  last  you  for 
two  days  if  you  are  careful." 

He  saw  a  dreadful  momentary  suspicion 
come  into  her  face,  and  added,  "I  am  afraid 
I  told  you  a  lie  about  the  other  bottle."  He 
drew  it  out  and  showed  it  to  her.  "I  thought 
I  might  be  able  to  help  you  along  a  little 
faster;  but  there  is  only  one  way,  and  I  doubt 
whether  I  could  get  to  the  end  of  the  journey 
without  taking  some  of  yours.  But  don't  be 
afraid.  I  shall  come  back." 

[56] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


Very  carefully,  safeguarding  every  drop,  he 
poured  a  little  less  than  half  of  the  water  into 
his  empty  bottle. 

"If  you  wait  here,"  he  said,  "you  will  get  a 
little  shelter  from  the  heat,  and  I  should  advise 
you  to  save  yourself  in  every  way.  Don't  move 
about.  Try  to  sleep  if  you  possibly  can,  and 
don't  forget  that  you  are  going  to  come 
through  this  all  right." 

He  put  a  few  of  the  crackers  in  his  coat 
pocket,  placed  the  basket  at  her  side,  and  left 
her  without  looking  back.  He  was  already 
fifty  yards  on  his  way  when  he  heard  his  name 
called  and  turned  to  see  her  standing  at  the 
mouth  of  the  cave.  She  signed  to  him  to  come 
back,  and  he  obeyed. 

"You  have  forgotten  something,"  she  said. 
"You  couldn't  possibly  do  it  without  more 
food.  I  shall  only  stay  here  on  condition  that 
you  take  this.  I  have  taken  out  all  that  I  shall 
need." 

She  held  out  the  basket.  He  saw  at  once 
that  she  had  not  taken  anything. 

[57] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"You  have  given  me  more  than  you  think," 
he  said,  almost  sullenly.  "I  shall  not  take  any 
more;  and,  unless  you  promise  to  stay  here,  I 
shall  not  take  anything  at  all.  Remember,  that 
if  you  don't,  you  may  be  responsible  for  the 
loss  of  those  who  come  to  look  for  you." 

Without  a  word  more  he  turned  and  left  her; 
and  in  a  few  minutes  Jean  Reddington  saw 
him,  a  white  speck  dwindling  into  the  tawny 
distances  of  the  desert  valley. 


[58] 


CHAPTER  VIII 


About  nine  hours  later,  bent  nearly  double 
with  fatigue,  he  was  still  moving  forward 
through  a  deep  rock-strewn  gully,  dry  as  bone 
dust  and  without  a  hint  even  of  the  returning 
green  of  the  cactus,  when  he  saw  before  him 
against  the  stars,  the  vast  shadowy  dome  of 
the  Sugar  Loaf  Peak,  which,  as  he  knew, 
marked  the  southern  limit  of  the  valley.  As 
soon  as  he  saw  it,  he  made  his  final  gambler's 
decision,  drank  the  small  reserve  of  water,  less 
than  a  cupful,  that  he  had  intended  to  keep 
for  another  twelve  hours,  rested  for  five  min 
utes,  and  then,  finding  it  easier  than  to  rise  to 
his  feet,  crept  forward  slowly  on  hands  and 
knees.  As  he  neared  the  base  of  that  Dark 
Tower,  he  thought  that  once  again  the  shadows 
must  be  talking  to  him.  He  heard  them  call 
ing  to  each  other  and  hallooing  among  the 
rocks. 

[59] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


Then,  with  a  shock  of  the  nerves  that  seemed 
to  brace  him,  and  to  unlock  some  deep  reserves 
of  strength,  he  saw  a  ring  of  stealthy  four- 
footed  shadows  creeping  towards  him.  Little 
sparks  of  red  and  green — eyes  perhaps — glit 
tered,  vanished,  and  glittered  again  around  him 
like  fireflies.  They  grew  bolder.  He  caught 
sight  of  grinning  teeth  and  a  red  tongue.  He 
thought,  with  a  burst  of  hope,  that  they  must 
be  coyotes.  If  they  were,  he  could  not  be  so 
far  from  help.  There  was  no  food  even  for 
the  coyotes  in  the  Death  Valley.  The  thought 
seemed  to  endow  him  for  the  moment  with 
superhuman  strength.  He  would  have  wel 
comed  a  hundred  packs  of  coyotes,  and  his 
first  impulse  was  to  leap  at  them,  try  to  seize 
one  of  them  by  the  throat,  and  satisfy  his  own 
wolfish  hunger  and  thirst  with  it.  They  were 
too  quick  for  him  to  reach  them  with  his  hands, 
or  he  wrould  have  attempted  it.  He  stumbled 
forward,  picking  up  stones  as  he  went,  and 
hurling  them  at  the  vague  shapes  in  the  dark 
ness.  They  slunk  back,  snarling  like  a  pack  of 

[60] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


dogs  before  a  specter.  .  .  .  Then,  abruptly,  he 
found  himself  face  to  face  with  a  glimmering 
figure,  seen  vaguely  like  his  own  image  in  a 
shadowy  mirror,  and  for  the  second  time  on 
that  desert  pilgrimage,  he  fell  forward,  face 
downwards  in  the  dust,  while  shadows  and 
voices  gathered  around  him.  They  were  more 
visionary  even  than  the  shadows  of  the 
pioneers.  \Their  outlines  and  faces  were 
blurred,  and  their  voices  only  a  murmur;  but 
their  very  strangeness  in  this  desert  proved 
their  reality,  and  he  knew  that  he  was  amongst 
beings  of  flesh  and  blood. 

They  revived  him  quickly.  Water  and 
brandy  gave  him  strength  to  speak,  and  he 
poured  out  directions  as  the  horses  were  got 
ready. 

"It  can't  be  more  than  twenty  miles,  on  the 
right  side  of  the  valley,"  he  repeated,  adding 
anxious  little  suggestions.  "Call  to  her  as  you 
go;  she  may  be  asleep.  You  might  miss  her; 
it's  a  cave  in  the  cliff." 

He  wanted  to  go  with  them,  though  he  knew 

[61] 


BEYOND     THE     DES  E~R~T 


that  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  tether.  While  he 
was  insisting,  and  trying  to  lay  hold  on  the 
reins  with  his  numbed  hands,  he  reeled  again, 
and  dropped.  But,  before  he  lost  conscious 
ness,  he  heard  the  thudding  of  the  horses'  hoofs 
as  the  search-party  went  up  Death  Valley. 

The  helping  hands  and  voices  around  him 
did  everything  that  could  be  done.  Half  an 
hour  later,  he  lay,  pillowed  comfortably  in  a 
wagon,  looking  up  at  the  starry  sky  and  won 
dering  at  the  miracle  that  had  happened.  Per 
haps  half  a  dozen  times  in  a  year  well-equipped 
adventurous  parties  of  young  Californians 
would  make  an  expedition  to  Death  Valley, 
along  the  route  of  Rogers  and  Manly,  and  it 
was  one  of  these  rare  expeditions  that  he  had 
encountered. 

They  had  told  him  to  sleep,  but  he  could  not 
sleep  until  the  search  party  returned.  He  had 
little  doubt  now  that  all  would  be  well,  but 
there  was  something  better  than  sleep  in  the 
orderly  movement  of  those  shining  hosts  above 
him,  by  which  he  marked  the  lapse  of  the  hours. 

[62] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


There  was  Orion,  on  his  long  bright  trail  to 
the  west;  Orion,  the  hunter,  slain  by  Artemis 
because  he  loved  the  Dawn.  .  .  . 

"All  safe!"  he  heard  voices  calling.  A  clat 
ter  of  hoofs  echoed  among  the  rocks.  The  dis 
tance  could  not  have  been  as  great  as  he 
thought.  He  raised  himself  on  an  elbow  and 
saw  one  of  the  rescuers  lifting  Jean  Redding- 
ton  down  from  the  saddle.  Then  he  turned 
over  and  slept. 


[63] 


CHAPTER  IX 


The  journey  from  the  desert  through  its 
gray-green  fringes  of  sage-brush  to  the  palm- 
trees  and  blossoming  orchards  of  the  sunset- 
land  has  always  a  suggestion  of  beautiful  com 
pensations,  as  if  dews  had  been  denied  to  the 
wilderness  only  to  enrich  the  paradise  beyond. 
The  travelers  from  Death  Valley  passed  slow 
ly  through  those  exquisite  gradations  between 
the  golden  drought  and  the  sun-kissed  valleys 
where  the  warm  mist  floated  at  evening  over 
fragrant  orange-orchards.  Days  and  nights 
had  drifted  by,  but  to  Baxter  the  whole  jour 
ney  was  one  deepening  and  miraculous  hour, 
confirming  in  some  subtle  way  everything  that 
the  pioneers  had  told  him  in  the  desert  about 
the  heaven  that  he  had  wished  to  destroy. 

Perhaps  he  was  unable  to  discern  how  much 
of  this  new  glory  came  from  within,  as  he 

[65] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


glanced  at  the  face  of  Jean  Reddington,  riding 
beside  him  towards  the  sunset.  Very  few  words 
had  passed  between  them  on  the  journey.  It 
was  not  until  they  were  entering  Hesperia,  that 
little  shining  town  of  palm-trees  among  the 
foot-hills  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  that  she  spoke 
to  him  of  her  rescue.  The  beauty  of  the  land 
was  opening  out  before  them.  The  little  white 
bungalows,  clouded  round  the  eaves  with  pur 
ple  bougainvillea,  glimmered  like  Greek  tem 
ples  through  the  dusk;  and  the  street  lights 
among  the  long  green  tresses  of  the  pepper 
trees  hung  like  clusters  of  shining  fruit. 

"I  have  never  thanked  you,"  she  said,  as 
they  dropped  a  little  behind  the  rest  of  the 
party,  "for  bringing  me  back  to  all  this.  It's 
like  Heaven  opening  out,  isn't  it?" 

"And  the  arms  of  God's  mercy,"  murmured 
Baxter. 

She  looked  at  him  with  shining  eyes.  "I 
suppose  you  are  going  into  danger  at  this  mo 
ment?"  she  said.  "Have  you  any  plans?" 

[66] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"I  am  going  to  keep  my  promise  to  the 
pioneers,"  said  Baxter. 

"My  father  would  help  you  if  .  .  ." 
"No,"  he  interrupted  at  once.  "I  must 
stand  on  my  own  feet.  Besides,  I've  got  to  try 
and  persuade  my  old  friends  that  they're  on 
the  wrong  road.  There's  a  meeting  in  Los  An 
geles  to-morrow  night,  and  I  must  be  there, 
or  I  may  be  too  late  to  prevent  worse  things 
happening.  They  would  never  listen  to  me 
again,  if  your  father  were  even  to  shake  hands 
with  me.  You  see "  he  smiled  a  little  grim 
ly — "I'm  between  two  fires.  I  can't  go  with 
you  much  farther,  or  I  may  be  taken  by  your 
own  friends.  I  understand  that  the  plan  is  to 
put  up  at  the  Juniper  Inn  here  to-night.  I 
shall  slip  away  as  soon  as  we  reach  it." 
"But  how  will  you  get  to  Los  Angeles?" 
"Even  in  Hesperia  there  are  a  few  followers 
of  the  red  flag.  One  of  my  friends  here  will 
lend  me  a  coat  to  cover  my  tatters,  and  drive 
me  in  by  automobile." 

"You  will  let  me  know  how  you  get  on?" 

[67] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


He  looked  at  her  for  a  moment  without 
speaking,  and  his  face  had  all  the  drought  of 
Death  Valley  in  it. 

"I  don't  suppose  we  shall  meet  again,"  he 
said.  "I  am  a  pioneer  now,  in  the  desert." 

"But  you  have  conquered  it  once?"  she  re 
plied. 

Nothing  more  passed  between  them  till  the 
glimmering  figures  a  hundred  yards  ahead 
pulled  up  at  the  entrance  to  the  Inn.  Baxter 
and  Jean  Reddington  also  stopped,  and  dis 
mounted  in  the  shadow  of  a  lion-maned  palm. 
He  held  out  his  hand. 

"I  must  say  good-by  to  you  here,"  he  said. 
And,  as  she  laid  her  hand  in  his  own,  her  face 
looked  as  he  had  seen  it  once  before,  when  he 
left  her  in  the  desert. 

"Perhaps,"  she  said  at  last,  as  he  relin 
quished  her  hand,  "we  are  all  of  us  pioneers. 
I  shall  do  my  best." 

It  was  dark  in  the  shadow  of  the  palm;  but 
he  saw  that  the  tears  were  running  down  her 
face ;  and,  for  a  moment,  his  control  failed. 

[68] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear!"  he  cried.  "There 
are  so  many  deserts  between  us.  Good-by!" 

For  a  moment  her  tears  were  salt  against 
his  lips.  Then  they  parted,  blindly.  Baxter 
hurried  down  a  by-street  under  the  deep  black 
shadows  of  the  eucalyptus  trees.  Jean  Red- 
dington,  with  bent  head,  led  the  two  horses  up 
to  the  Inn. 


[69] 


CHAPTER  X 


When  Baxter  arrived  at  the  secret  meeting 
of  the  Reds  in  Los  Angeles,  he  knew  the  risk 
that  he  was  about  to  run.  The  forces  of  the 
law  were  already  against  him;  before  long,  he 
would  probably  be  an  Ishmaelite  among  the 
forces  of  rebellion.  It  was  more  than  possible 
that  they  would  attack  him,  perhaps  kill  him, 
as  a  traitor ;  but  his  resolution  had  been  steadily 
strengthened  as  the  wonder  of  the  civilized 
world  opened  out  before  him  once  again. 

When  the  motor-car  bore  him  through  the 
brilliant  streets  of  Los  Angeles,  it  was  as  if  he 
saw  a  city  of  men  for  the  first  time.  Despite 
all  the  apparent  wrongs  that  were  inherent  in 
the  material  universe,  all  the  changes  and 
chances  that  fell  upon  the  just  and  unjust  in 
human  affairs  as  in  Nature  herself,  he  saw  that 
this  thing  created  by  the  spirit  of  man  and  con 
tinually  arising  to  new  heights  was  good. 

[71] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


But  there  was  an  unwonted  ferment  in  the 
city  to-night.  Little  groups  of  excited  men  at 
street  corners  were  discussing  (as  Baxter 
knew)  the  impending  strike,  which  was  to  in 
itiate  the  revolution.  The  newspapers  carried 
big  headlines  warning  the  public  that  all  light 
and  power  might  be  cut  off  from  the  city  at  any 
moment.  It  was  a  dramatic  coincidence  that, 
while  the  car  was  still  only  half  way  through 
the  city,  the  appointed  moment  should  come  to 
confirm  Baxter's  new  apprehension  of  the 
truth.  All  the  constellated  glory  of  those 
lights,  the  stars  of  civilization  that  he  had 
fought  through  Death  Valley  to  reach,  were 
suddenly  turned  off,  as  if  by  a  gigantic  hand 
at  some  central  station,  and  the  whole  city  was 
plunged  into  darkness.  The  battle  had  begun 
already. 

The  meeting  of  the  Reds  was  held  in  one  of 
the  worst  districts,  at  a  dilapidated  hotel,  run 
by  a  Mexican  half-breed,  who  had  become  un 
commonly  prosperous  of  late,  since  the  trickle 
of  Red  gold  had  begun  to  flow  through  Vladi- 

[72] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


vostok.  This  man  and  three  of  the  Red  leaders 
greeted  Baxter  with  enthusiasm  in  a  stuffy 
little  room  behind  the  main  "lecture-hall" 
where  the  others  were  waiting.  One  of  the 
leaders,  known  among  his  associates  as  the 
Panther,  overwhelmed  him  with  congratula 
tions  on  his  escape,  and  boasted  volubly  of  the 
complete  triumph  of  the  "proletariat"  that  was 
even  now  beginning.  Then  they  led  him 
through  a  door  that  opened  directly  on  to  the 
platform  in  the  larger  room.  He  could  see 
nothing  of  the  men  assembled  there,  for,  since 
the  proletariat  had  extinguished  its  own  lights, 
the  room  was  in  almost  complete  darkness. 
But  Baxter  knew,  from  former  experience, 
that  it  was  a  long  low  hall  which  would  seat 
some  hundreds.  A  single  oil  lamp  on  the  plat 
form  showed  only  the  faces  of  the  four  men 
beside  him.  The  Chairman,  a  Russian  Jew 
with  fanatical  eyes  and  a  mass  of  black  hair 
that  looked  as  if  it  were  brushed  back  over  a 
frame,  opened  the  proceedings. 

"Comrades,"  he   said,  "the  victory  of  the 

[73] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


proletariat  is  beginning.  Let  us  sing  the  Inter 
nationale,  but  quietly.  We  do  not  wish  a  police 
raid  to-night." 

Somewhere  in  the  darkness  a  group  of  voices 
began  to  sing  in  low  tones.  The  song  was 
taken  up,  section  by  section,  till  the  whole  hall 
vibrated  like  the  engine-room  of  a  steamer. 
There  were  certainly  hundreds  of  men  present. 
The  Panther  wandered  up  and  down  at  the 
back  of  the  platform,  with  his  long  fingers 
twitching.  He  examined  the  shuttered  win 
dows  at  each  end,  exactly  as  his  namesake  ex 
amines  the  doors  of  its  cage. 

"Comrades,"  the  Chairman  resumed  at  the 
end  of  the  song,  "the  first  speaker  to-night 
will  be  Comrade  Baxter." 

A  low  thunder  of  applause,  a  thudding  of 
feet  on  the  wooden  floor  all  over  the  building, 
was  succeeded  by  a  hush  and  an  audible  intake 
of  the  breath  as  Baxter  threw  off  his  light  coat 
and  stood  before  them  in  his  tattered,  blood 
stained  clothes. 

[74] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


"Comrades,"  he  began,  "I  have  brought 
you  a  message  from  the  desert." 

Tersely,  vividly,  he  told  them  of  his  escape 
from  his  warders,  of  his  journey  through 
Death  Valley,  and  his  meeting  with  the 
pioneers.  "Those  were  the  true  Reds,"  he 
cried,  "those  men  in  red  shirts,  Asabel  Bennett 
and  the  rest  of  them.  They  told  me,  they 
taught  me,  that  you  and  I  were  making  a  mis 
take;  and  I  have  come  to  give  you  their  mes 
sage.  I  am  sorry  that  I  cannot  see  your  faces. 
All  this  putting  out  of  lights,  we  are  told,  is 
only  a  means  to  an  end.  But  the  lights  have 
never  come  on  again  in  Russia.  Let  us  make 
sure  that  the  end  is  not  going  to  be  total  dark 
ness  here  too." 

Baxter  had  always  been  a  good  speaker;  but 
to-night  as  he  warmed  to  his  work,  he  spoke 
like  a  man  possessed  with  a  spirit  greater  than 
his  own.  He  spoke  as  if  he  had  become  a  mere 
mask,  a  mouthpiece  of  the  vanished  pioneers 
who  had  built  up  a  nation  with  their  hands. 
He  pleaded  with  the  hidden  crowd  in  the  rough 

~ [75] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


direct  vernacular  that  they  could  understand, 
pleaded  with  them  for  the  fabric  that  they  were 
ready  to  destroy.  Mutterings  reached  him 
from  the  darkness,  and  he  saw,  with  a  sidelong 
glance,  that  the  Panther,  after  some  whispers 
with  the  Jew,  was  leaving  the  platform.  It 
was  a  danger  sign,  he  knew.  The  leaders 
would  stick  at  nothing,  and  he  guessed  the  na 
ture  of  the  consultation  that  was  being  held  in 
the  little  room  at  his  back.  But  he  was  grip 
ping  the  crowd  in  front,  and  he  knew  it,  even 
in  that  darkness. 

Lucidly,  point  by  point,  he  delivered  the 
message  of  the  pioneers,  and  passed  before  his 
hearers  the  pageant  of  their  great  inheritance. 
He  demolished  the  cheap  rhetoric  with  which 
it  had  been  assailed,  and  his  weapon  was  irony, 
a  brutal  sardonic  mockery,  couched  in  unprint 
able  language  that  went  punching  home  again 
and  again  like  the  ungloved  knuckles  of  a 
boxer.  He  admitted  all  the  wrongs  of  our 
civilization,  as  he  admitted  the  horrors  of  earth 
quake,  pestilence,  and  famine  in  Nature.  He 

[76] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


not  only  admitted  them,  he  painted  them  in  raw 
colors  and  naked  phrases  that  showed  them  to 
his  hearers  for  the  first  time.  "But  are  you 
going  to  abolish  houses,"  he  cried,  "because 
your  children  have  been  burned  alive  in  them?" 

The  gist  of  his  argument,  in  printable  lan 
guage,  was  that  they  did  not  know  their  enemy. 
The  apparent  indifference  of  the  great  body 
of  civilization  to  its  own  people  had  sometimes 
an  appearance  of  wicked  cruelty;  but  this  in 
difference  was  the  same  in  kind  as  that  of  the 
Reds  themselves  or  any  other  group  of  men  to 
whom  a  wholesale  massacre  in  China  means 
less  than  a  knife-thrust  in  their  own  immedi 
ate  circle. 

"This  very  night,"  he  said,  "men  were  on 
the  operating  tables  in  the  hospitals.  Did  you 
think  of  them  when  you  put  the  lights  out  and 
left  the  surgeons  groping  in  the  dark  to  stop 
them  bleeding  to  death?" 

He  told  them  that  they  were  bound  together 
much  more  closely  than  they  knew.  He  showed 
them  that  men  must  pay  the  penalties  for  their 

"  [77] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


own  mistakes,  and  that  as  a  rule  they  must 
even  abide  by  their  bad  luck.  He  gave  them 
analogies  from  their  card  games.  "What 
would  become  of  the  game,"  he  cried,  "if  every 
one  insisted  on  winning?"  Let  them  organize 
for  creation,  for  making  the  game  of  life  more 
worth  while,  not  for  destruction  and  general 
chaos.  It  was  in  the  laws  of  the  game  that 
they  would  find  their  freedom;  and  the  de 
velopment  of  the  game  depended  on  their 
development  of  its  laws,  not  in  a  return  to  law 
lessness.  If  it  was  greater  wealth  they  wanted, 
they  would  never  obtain  it  by  destroying  the 
existing  wealth  of  a  few,  or  by  sharing  it  out, 
one  dollar  to  each  of  the  proletariat,  and  a 
sackful  to  the  Panther.  They  must  level  up, 
not  down.  All  this  talk  of  "my  neighbor's 
money  or  my  neighbor's  life"  in  the  interests 
of  human  brotherhood,  was  the  drivel  of  politi 
cal  crooks.  If  all  men  were  kings,  let  the  kings 
be  a  little  prouder.  Let  them  stand  on  their 
own  feet,  and  win  by  their  own  muscle  and 
brain.  On  the  lowest  ground  they  would  ob- 

~ [78] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


tain  more  than  ever  they  would  by  picking 
their  neighbor's  pocket,  or  by  setting  the  feet 

above   the  head,  and   destroying   all   natural 
values. 

"It  is  not  a  bad  desert  that  we  are  fighting 
through,"  he  said,  in  conclusion.  "The  pioneers 
in  Death  Valley  told  me  it  was  a  better  para 
dise  than  any  of  their  kings  had  ever  known. 
If  it  is  not  good  enough  for  you  and  me,  we 
must  organize  to  make  things  better  without 
troubling  our  heads  about  robbing  and  killing 
the  fewr  lucky  ones  who  don't  agree  with  us; 
and  we  can't  even  see  the  next  step  on  our 
road  until  you  put  the  lights  on." 

He  had  carried  the  greater  number  of  the 
hidden  crowd  with  him,  and  he  knew  it  even 
before  the  unexpected  burst  of  applause  that 
told  him  so.  Unfortunately,  the  crowd  was 
not  the  leader  of  the  crowd.  The  applause 
was  so  evidently  real  that  it  put  Baxter  off  his 
guard.  He  turned;  and,  seeing  that  he  was 
alone  on  the  platform,  he  walked  without  hesi 
tation  through  the  door  at  the  back  to  look  for 

[79] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


the  others.  He  expected  at  least  a  hot  argu 
ment  with  the  three  leaders,  but  they  stood 
facing  him  there  in  the  stuffy  little  room,  look 
ing  strangely  complacent,  as  if  they  had  come 
to  some  satisfactory  conclusion.  The  Panther 
even  sniggered  a  little.  Not  a  word  was 
spoken.  The  Mexican  shut  the  door  behind 
Baxter.  There  was  hardly  a  second  between 
the  click  of  the  latch  and  the  savage  grunt  of 
the  half-breed  as  he  drove  his  knife  into  Bax 
ter's  left  side. 


[80] 


CHAPTER  XI 


The  house  of  John  Reddington,  on  the 
heights  overlooking  Los  Angeles,  had  been 
plunged  into  darkness  like  the  rest  of  the  city. 
On  the  following  evening,  when  Jean  Red 
dington  looked  from  the  veranda  for  the  usual 
constellated  streets  and  starry  towers  that 
shine  so  brightly  through  the  Californian  air, 
she  saw  only  a  vast  obscurity,  illuminated  here 
and  there  by  the  red  and  white  fireflies  of 
motor-lamps  flickering  through  the  long  ave 
nues  of  trees. 

Down  there,  she  knew  that  an  outlawed  man 
— her  rescuer — had  been  fighting  with  that 
darkness.  It  seemed  to  her  like  a  tangible  and 
gigantic  enemy,  a  symbol  of  the  evil  forces  that 
were  trying  to  reduce  the  world  to  a  desert 
again. 

A  motor-car  came  slowly  round  the  curved 

[81] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


road  to  the  house,  and  stopped  in  front  of  the 
door.  A  young  man  alighted,  and  came  up  to 
the  veranda,  raising  his  hat. 

"Miss  Reddington?"  he  said. 

"Yes." 

"One  of  my  patients  at  the  hospital  asked 
me  to  bring  you  this  note.  It  was  that  I.  W. 
W.  blackguard,  who  was  responsible,  I  believe, 
for  all  your  troubles  in  the  desert.  He  showed 
me  the  note,  and  I  couldn't  make  out  why  he 
should  want  to  bother  you  with  it ;  but  the  poor 
devil  was  dying,  so  I  told  him  I  would.  He 
died  just  before  I  left.  They  had  a  big  row  at 
one  of  their  meetings  last  night.  I  am  told  that 
he  routed  the  extremists  and  that  the  strike 
will  probably  end  at  once.  The  meeting  ended 
in  a  free  fight,  apparently,  and  somebody 
knifed  him.  They  just  missed  his  heart.  He 
managed  to  lay  out  two  of  the  leaders,  and 
then  staggered  into  the  street.  We  did  every 
thing  we  could  for  him  at  the  hospital,  chiefly 
because  he  killed  the  other  two  chaps,  but  he 
died  about  an  hour  ago." 

[82]  ~ 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


Jean  Reddington  leaned  over  the  parapet  of 
the  veranda,  and  took  the  note. 

"Thank  you,"  she  said.  "Ah,  there's  my 
father.  I  know  he'd  like  to  speak  to  you  about 
it." 

The  doctor  smiled,  raised  his  hat  again,  and 
walked  towards  the  burly  figure  that  had  just 
emerged  from  the  house. 

Jean  Reddington  turned  in  the  opposite  di 
rection  to  a  side  door,  and  ran  up  to  her  room. 
There  she  lighted  a  candle  by  the  side  of  her 
bed,  and  opened  the  note  with  shaking  fingers. 
It  contained  only  a  few  scrawled  words  in  pen 
cil,  but  her  body  shook  with  all  that  she  dis 
cerned  in  them,  as  though  his  arms  were  about 
her  and  his  lips  upon  her  lips.  There  was  no 
meaning  for  the  others  in  those  words.  He 
had  chosen  them  carefully  for  herself,  and  sup 
pressed  everything  else. 

"All's    well.      I    have    come    through 

Death  Falley,  and  it's  opening  out  again. 

There  was  a  palm  in  Hesperia. 

"James  Baxter." 

[83] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


She  extinguished  the  candle,  moved  to  the 
window,  and  looked  again  towards  the  dark 
ened  city.  Far  away  to  the  southward,  a 
crown  of  little  lights  glittered,  as  if  a  cluster 
of  stars  had  dropped  to  earth. 

"A  very  unstable  character,"  she  heard  her 
father  say,  on  the  veranda  below. 

"Well,  he  certainly  helped  to  break  the 
strike,"  said  the  doctor.  "I  wish  they  would 
all  save  us  the  trouble  of  killing  them.  Look, 
there  are  the  lights  coming  on  again.  Beauti 
ful,  aren't  they?" 

The  watcher  above  sank  on  her  knees  by  the 
window.  Mile  after  mile,  as  if  the  lonely  hand 
of  the  dead  man  were  turning  them  on  from 
an  invisible  center,  innumerable  points  of  light 
awoke  in  the  purple  valley.  She  seemed  to  be 
looking  down  over  the  edge  of  the  world  into 
another  night  of  stars,  and  another  milky  way. 

Nearer  and  nearer  came  those  glittering 
constellations.  The  clustering  globes  shone 
out  like  bunches  of  white  grapes  through  the 
amethystine  dusk  of  the  arroyo,  and  along  the 

[84] 


BEYOND     THE     DESERT 


dark  avenue  of  palms  that  climbed  to  the 
white-pillared  house. 

"It  was  a  curious  little  note,  but  I  promised 
to  bring  it,"  said  the  voice  of  the  doctor  imme 
diately  under  her  window. 

"Poor  devil.  I  suppose  he  had  the  desert 
on  his  mind,"  said  her  father,  as  he  switched 
on  the  light  in  the  porch. 

It  seemed  as  if  all  the  lights  in  the  world 
were  on  now,  with  the  exception  of  one.  Jean 
Reddington  preferred  to  remain  kneeling  in 
the  dark  at  her  window,  repeating  over  and 
over  again  the  words  that  they  were  not  meant 
to  understand : — 

"All's  well.    I  hare  come  through  Death 
Falley.  .  .  ." 


[85] 


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